Gray's journal, written
in 1769 as a series of letters to his friend
Dr. Thomas Wharton and first published posthumously
with an edition of his poems in 1775, perfectly
illustrates the later-eighteenth-century
interest in venturing forth into nature,
Claude glass in hand, to catch "a diversity
of views" and "prospects" from
the most favorable "stations" established
for the purpose. The journal was several
times reprinted and beginning in 1780 was
read by numerous travelers as an appendix
to Thomas West's popular Guide to
the Lakes. Wordsworth refers to it nostalgically
half a century later in Section Third of
his own Guide to the Lakes.

October
3 [1769]. Wind at S.E.; a heavenly day. Rose
at 7, and walked out under the conduct of
my landlord to Borrodale. The grass
was covered with a hoar frost, which soon
melted, and exhaled in a thin blueish smoke.
Crossed the meadows obliquely, catching a
diversity of views among the hills over the
lake and islands, and changing prospect at
every ten paces; left Cockshut and Castlehill (which
we formerly mounted) behind me, and drew
near the foot of Walla-crag, whose
bare and rocky brow, cut perpendicularly
down above 400 feet, as I guess, awefully
overlooks the way; our path here tends to
the left, and the ground gently rising, and
covered with a glade of scattering trees
and bushes on the very margin of the water,
opens both ways the most delicious view that
my eyes ever beheld. Behind you are the magnificent
heights of Walla-crag; opposite lie
the thick hanging woods of Lord Egremont,
and Newland valley, with green and
smiling fields embosomed in the dark cliffs;
to the left the jaws of Borrodale,
with that turbulent chaos of mountain behind
mountain, rolled in confusion; beneath you,
and stretching far away to the right, the
shining purity of the Lake, just ruffled
by the breeze enough to shew it is alive,
reflecting rocks, woods, fields, and inverted
tops of mountains, with the white buildings
of Keswick, Crosthwait church, and Skiddaw for
a background at a distance. Oh! Doctor! I
never wished more for you; and pray think,
how the glass played its part in such a spot,
which is called Carf-close-reeds;
I chuse to set down these barbarous names,
that anybody may enquire on the place, and
easily find the particular station, that
I mean. This scene continues to Barrow-gate,
and a little farther, passing a brook called Barrow-beck,
we entered Borrodale. The crags, named Lodoor-banks,
now begin to impend terribly over your way;
and more terribly, when you hear that three
years since an immense mass of rock tumbled
at once from the brow, and barred all access
to the dale (for this is the only road) till
they could work their way through it. Luckily
no one was passing at the time of this fall;
but down the side of the mountain and far
into the lake lie dispersed the huge fragments
of this ruin in all shapes and in all directions.
Something farther we turned aside into a
coppice, ascending a little in front of Lodoor water-fall.
The height appears to be about 200 feet,
the quantity of water not great, though (these
three days excepted) it had rained daily
in the hills for near two months before:
but then the stream was nobly broken, leaping
from rock to rock, and foaming with fury.
On one side a towering crag, that spired
up to equal, if not overtop, the neighbouring
cliffs (this lay all in shade and darkness);
on the other hand a rounder broader projecting
hill shagged with wood and illumined by the
sun, which glanced sideways on the upper
part of the cataract. The force of the water
wearing a deep channel in the ground hurries
away to join the lake. We descended again,
and passed the stream over a rude bridge.
Soon after we came under Gowder crag,
a hill more formidable to the eye and to
the apprehension than that of Lodoor;
the rocks a-top, deep-cloven perpendicularly
by the rains, hanging loose and nodding forwards,
seem just starting from their base in shivers;
the whole way down and the road on both sides
is strewed with piles of the fragments strangely
thrown across each other, and of a dreadful
bulk. The place reminds one of those passes
in the Alps, where the guides tell you to
move on with speed, and say nothing, lest
the agitation of the air should loosen the
snows above, and bring down a mass that would
overwhelm a caravan. I took their counsel
here and hastened on in silence. * * *

Walked leisurely home the way we came, but
saw a new landscape: the features indeed
were the same in part, but many new ones
were disclosed by the midday sun, and the
tints were entirely changed. Take notice
this was the best or perhaps the only day
for going up Skiddaw, but I thought it better
employed: it was perfectly serene, and hot
as Midsummer.

In the evening walked alone down to the
Lake by the side of Crow-Park after
sunset and saw the solemn colouring of night
draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading
away on the hill-tops, the deep serene of
the waters, and the long shadows of the mountains
thrown across them, till they nearly touched
the hithermost shore. At distance heard the
murmur of many waterfalls not audible in
the day-time. Wished for the Moon, but she
was dark to me and silent, hid in her
vacant interlunar cave.>>note 1 * * *

October
8th. * * * Past by the little chapel of Wiborn,
out of which the Sunday congregation were
then issuing. Past a beck near Dunmailraise and
entered Westmoreland a second time, now begin
to see Helm-crag distinguished from
its rugged neighbours not so much by its
height, as by the strange broken outline
of its top, like some gigantic building demolished,
and the stones that composed it flung across
each other in wild confusion. Just beyond
it opens one of the sweetest landscapes that
art ever attempted to imitate. The bosom
of the mountains spreading here into a broad
basin discovers in the midst Grasmere-water;
its margin is hollowed into small bays with
bold eminences, some of rock, some of soft
turf, that half conceal and vary the figure
of the little lake they command. From the
shore a low promontory pushes itself far
into the water, and on it stands a white
village with the parish-church rising in
the midst of it, hanging enclosures, corn-fields,
and meadows green as an emerald, with their
trees and hedges, and cattle fill up the
whole space from the edge of the water. Just
opposite to you is a large farm-house at
the bottom of a steep smooth lawn embosomed
in old woods, which climb half way up the
mountain's side, and discover above them
a broken line of crags that crown the scene.
Not a single red tile, no flaring
>>note 2 gentleman's
house, or garden walls break in upon the repose of this little unsuspected
paradise, but all is peace, rusticity, and happy poverty in its neatest,
most becoming attire.